SCREEN PLAY The golden age of cinema was also a heyday for polo in flm, says Nigel à Brassard
Many readers will have vivid memories of Julia Roberts, elegantly dressed in her brown silk polka-dot sun dress, treading in the divots with Richard Gere at the polo match in the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman. Some may also remember the polo action scenes in The Great Gatsby of 1974, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Not to mention the polo sequences of Steve McQueen in the 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair, in which he starred alongside Faye Dunaway, where the
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elaborate split-screen device maximises the visual impact and excitement of a match. Of course, there is also that scene in the 1968 flm Carry On up the Khyber, in which Sir Sidney and Lady Ruff-Diamond (Sid James and Joan Sims) watch a polo match. At one point Sir Sidney shouts, ‘Well played, Philip!’ and then, as an aside, ‘He’ll go far, that boy, if he makes the right marriage.’ Lady RuffDiamond – channelling the spirit of Eliza Doolittle at Ascot in My Fair Lady – exclaims
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in a mock posh accent, ‘Oh, I say! He did not ’alf crack that one, did he not?’ But these feeting appearances of the sport pale into insignifcance when you consider its substantial presence in the movies during the golden age of cinema in the 1920s and 30s. Clockwise from above Stills and publicity material from 1925’s A Thief in Paradise, of which only the trailer now remains. The polo match, between blondes and brunettes, is the highlight of a lavish wedding
